Days away from the office
by North of the North
Summary: Mathew Williams is a detective, a great one, with a new and difficult murder case to solve as quickly as he can.


It had just been another normal day for Mathew Williams. He hadn't received any new projects to do, nothing at all. He had just been working on old cases that were hard to crack, for almost every other detective. All their evidence lost to time, no witnesses left alive to tell him anything, and no real reason to do them, except for the pleasure of having solved it he would get and adding the case to the list of completed cases his police force was oh so proud of having. He liked knowing that he was the head detective for his cities main police force. A job that he silently prided himself on the knowledge that he was known as the best at. Not just the best in the city either, he was known to be one of the best detectives on the international stage. He was known world wide for his bulging file of quickly completed assignements. He was the one that solved the toughest of the cases. That's what he was proud of.

Mathew was a perfectionist to the extreme, he had to do well at his job because it was the only thing that he really did well with his life. It was his only chance to be noticed when he was placed beside his equally gifted and much more noticed family members. This was his only way. He applied himself fully to every task.

So that day he sat there as he always does. Awaiting news which may help him piece together all of the clues to anyone of his long-term cases. He doubted there would be any new leads though, his cases were too tough to solve. Too old for any new news, it was a bleak hope to get a lead. Nothing would come to his desk.

Later that day, there was news that did come to his desk. However, it wasn't on an old case, any of them. The news that came to Mathews desk later that day was not what he had expected to come at all. There were no new leads for him to follow, it was not another message from a rookie detective wanting his help on a case or even something simple sent for him to finish quickly for the police force to make an arrest sooner rather than later. It was nothing like that at all.

No, what was brought to his desk was not any of the above. The case at first glance might have seemed simple, which would have been the reason it was brought to him. But, the case presented to him was not at all simple.

Just from seeing the picture stapled to the cover of the police report he knew that this case would last a long time and might, for once, even be interesting to him.

The photograph on the cover showed the body of a dead infant. Judging by its body size it had to have just been born when it was left in the alleyway. The umbilical cord was still attached and the baby wasn't wearing any clothes that Mathew could see.

There was even a small bit of commentary from the photographer included. "It seems as if this must have been an unwanted pregnancy, perhaps a teenage girl or a younger woman that could not support herself and the child. She had likely left it here either so that someone else would find it before it died which is more unlikely than the possibility that she just left the child here so that it would be gone from her life permanently."

Mathew carefully leafed through the rest of the notes, through the one stating the time of discovery, how old the baby seemed to be (newborn, a few day at most), and the location of the crime scene before he came to the last article in the folder. It was a close-up photograph of a note that had been found underneath the baby's body. The letters were blurred, maybe from the rain? But, he could still read them clearly. The note read, "I'm so sorry."

Mathew believed that the photographer had been right in the direction of his thoughts, except for this one little detail. The note certainly seemed to be from the mother of the child, however, Mathew Williams knew himself to be a master at noticing the slight differences between the writing characteristics of the two different sexes that each had their own noticiable style to writing.

That note had not been written by a woman. But, if it hadn't been written by a female, then who had left it? And what had happened to the woman that the baby was supposed to belong to? This case would be most unusual, thought Detective Mathew Williams as he gazed at the two photographs spread out side by side before him on the table.

'Most unusual indeed.'


End file.
